Brian Setzer colors Christmas with rockabilly swing

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It's been 10 years since Brian Setzer released a holiday album, but he broke the streak with the October release of "Rockin' Rudolph."

Recorded with his 18-piece “orchestra,” the new album features 12 songs consisting mostly of Christmas classics reimagined in Setzer’s distinctive swinging big-band-with-a-bit-of-rockabilly style.

Despite the long gap between holiday albums, it’s not like “Rockin’ Rudolph’ was part of any predetermined plan or any urgency Setzer felt to resume his series of Christmas albums.

“I don’t know, the bug just bit me,” Setzer said in an October phone interview, suggesting how spontaneously the idea of making the album germinated. “What happened was I did that version of ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ (retitled “Rockabilly Rudolph” on the album). I was fooling around at a sound check and I started playing that E minor riff and I started singing ‘Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer’ in that minor key … and I thought ‘Oh, that’s cool. No one’s ever done that.’ ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ is a nice little kind of country song. I’ll make it rockabilly, you know, Rudolph’s got an attitude now.”

This got Setzer curious about what other Christmas songs might be ripe for the big-band format.

Before he was done, Setzer’s selections included an instrumental take on “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing” with some serious swing, a tastefully rocked up “Carol of the Bells,” a jazzy and brassy “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” a version of “Here Comes Santa Claus” that could be called “jazzabilly” — and in a moment of true inspiration, he even turned “The Flintstones” theme into a holiday tune called “Yabba-Dabba Yuletide.”

The songs on "Rockin' Rudolph" give Setzer and his full orchestra some fresh songs to play on their annual holiday tour, which comes to Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre on Saturday. As in past years, this year's show figures to be pretty evenly split between Christmas songs and material from Setzer's various nonseasonal catalog, going back to the Stray Cats.

“Yikes, it gets hard because I change it (the set list) every year, but I have to add new songs,” he said. “It’s so hard to drop things out because I can’t drop out ‘Rock This Town’ and ‘Jingle Bells.’ I’ve got to play those and ‘Stray Cat Strut,’ and I’ve got to play ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.’”

Setzer fans know that whatever songs make the set, they’ll have a rousing good time at his shows. That seems obvious now. But success was hardly a sure thing when the singer/guitarist decided to form the Brian Setzer Orchestra.

Setzer, who came to fame when his rockabilly trio, the Stray Cats, scored a major hit with their 1982 album, “Built for Speed,” got the idea to form the orchestra in the early 1990s, not long after a short-lived Stray Cats reunion that produced an underrated 1992 album, “Choo Choo Hot Fish.” In between stints with the Stray Cats, Setzer made a pair of well-received solo albums in the latter half of the ’80s.

Putting a twist on the traditional big-band format by making his guitar a centerpiece of the Brian Setzer Orchestra sound (instead of the traditional role as a rhythm instrument), he debuted the big band on a 1994 self-titled album. That was followed two years later by a second album, “Guitar Slinger.”

Then the third album, 1998’s “The Dirty Boogie,” broke the Brian Setzer Orchestra into the mainstream. The album went top 10 behind the popular cover of the Louis Prima classic, “Jump, Jive and Wail.”

Setzer then took the orchestra into the Christmas market when he was invited to record several songs for the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie “Jingle All The Way.” Next came a first holiday album, 2002’s “Boogie Woogie Christmas,” followed by “Dig That Crazy Christmas” in 2005. Along the way, the Brian Setzer Orchestra launched its first tour and has made the tours an annual tradition now for a dozen years.

Setzer is more than happy to be able to take the orchestra on the road each holiday season.

“I love that tour. I hope that never goes away,” he said. “Not only is it profitable and everybody gets a good paycheck, but it’s just a beautiful sound. People light up. When I see people out on my Christmas tour, they’re so happy we’re back. They love it.”